Gossip
Overview
Gossip is idle talk or rumour, especially about the personal or private affairs of others, It is one of the oldest and most common means of sharing facts and views, but also has a reputation for the introduction of errors and variations into the information
Information
Information in its most restricted technical sense is a message or collection of messages that consists of an ordered sequence of symbols, or it is the meaning that can be interpreted from such a message or collection of messages. Information can be recorded or transmitted. It can be recorded as...

 transmitted. The term can also imply that the idle chat or rumour is of personal or trivial nature, as opposed to normal conversation
Conversation
Conversation is a form of interactive, spontaneous communication between two or more people who are following rules of etiquette.Conversation analysis is a branch of sociology which studies the structure and organization of human interaction, with a more specific focus on conversational...

,

Gossip has been researched in terms of its evolutionary psychology
Evolutionary psychology
Evolutionary psychology is an approach in the social and natural sciences that examines psychological traits such as memory, perception, and language from a modern evolutionary perspective. It seeks to identify which human psychological traits are evolved adaptations, that is, the functional...

 origins.
Quotations

Gossip. It’s just a harmless form of recreation. It’s careless talk that deals in polite fiction. It's nasty speculation that's based on not so polite fact. How do we protect ourselves from the venomous sting of such idle gossip? The best way is just to tell the truth and wait for people to start talking about someone else.

Wikipedia:Mary Alice Young|Mary Alice Young

"A woman and a mouse, they carry a tale wherever they go."

Gelett Burgess, The maxims of Methhuselah (1907)

"He's my friend who speaks well of me behind my back."

Thomas Fuller, Gnomologia

"To create an unfavourable impression, it is not necessary that certain things should be true, but that they have been said."

William Hazlitt, Characteristics (1823)

"There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about."

Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891)

 
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